A couple of hours with Yale Patt

HiPC'03 was an amazing experience for all of us who attended it from Anna University.We had a chance to meet the great doyen of Computer Architecture, Prof. Yale N.Patt currently with the University of Texas at Austin. We spent two hours with him. During the first hour we attended the keynote lecture, which drew up almost all the registrants and the second hour was private for us for we met him alone. Both the hours were remarkable in their own respect.

For most of us, his style of delivering lecture was completely new. But there were some attendees, who seemed to be very familiar with his speeches.We were astounded by his pounding voice even in his sixties. He outrightly rejected to have any sort of microphones.He was the only person to use OHPs. He said PPTs were dull and monotonous. He advised teachers against using them! The topic he chose was "The High Performance Microprocessor in the Year 2013: What will it look like? What it won't look like?". His pace of instruction was great and he touched upon all the systems right from the start of microprocessors to modern day systems. There were people from Intel, IBM who remained interactive throughout, making the whole atmosphere warm and pleasant.It was really a place of pride to be in!!

• "Education today, doesn't emphasize on learning the internals of the computer. All that is taught today remains the "top up" approach"
• "Computer Architecture is the middle man between the hardware and the software. A microarchitect plays a greater role than anybody and it is imperative that computer scientists are familiar with the topic"
• "A coprocessor and the processor can be compared to a baby gorilla and a mother gorilla. All that the baby does is swallowing the banana that its mother gives and spitting out the skin of its input."
• "Indians tend to understand pipelining and out of order execution better than Americans. In my country, there are road lanes, and the cars follow one another in a straight line. But here in India, just one horn; the person in the front leaves way and the person behind neatly drives around the former's vehicle to overtake him."
• "If you want to see money, there are a lot of avenues like the web technology, networking(!), etc. But microarchitecture is a field that needs to be explored through research and it lives as long as computers exist.I am a microarchitect!"
• "Moore's law is just a psychological effect. If a company packs a million transistors, then the engineer from the other company is forced to increase the number. This competition sustains the law"
• "The future shall see CCCA ! (Complicated Compiler Complicated Architecture)"

The next hour was our private meeting with him in the hotel lounge.His first question was "Where are you from?" We promptly replied "From Madras". He said "Well, there is no such place in India!". He was true. Madras had long before been rechristened as Chennai. He seemed to have great interest in Indian geography. He posted us some questions like "What is the only city in India that is in two states?", "What are the states that constitute the western part of India?", "How many states are there in India?"

We asked him to give us some advice and he did come up with certain great ones. He advised us with the following words which ought to ring in every Indian's words.
"India needs you, man! There are some problems in my country. All we can do is to train you up and you should be here back to serve your nation. But, I find many staying back there itself, reluctant to leave away the benefits and standards of living"

• "You should take up a career that interests you. You should not run after what gives you money. Satisfaction of work is what is important"
• "Don't just live by grades or marks."
• "Now you people will be fighting among yourselves for grades. But after twenty years, you will long to have the company you have around you now!"
• "Research papers should not be some sort of "kirk" works. You should do some substantial work."